


A Little Too Early (A Lot Too Late)

by azziraphale



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Angel Wings, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale and Crowley Were Both Raphael (Good Omens), Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fallen Angel Crowley (Good Omens), First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Headcanon, Heaven & Hell, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Slow Burn, well in the past anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-05-31 09:17:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19423018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azziraphale/pseuds/azziraphale
Summary: There were threads, when it came to the intricate embroidery of existence, that tied divine beings together. This was the first witnessing of a separation of these ties; God’s revision of a living being, filled with memory and consciousness and the glory of life. The archangel Raphael, healer of the downtrodden, as much a voice for the weak as Metatron was the voice of God, had been stripped before the council of his heavenly brothers. He plummeted down, past the primitive clouds where the headquarters was not yet built, and unfurled his faces. There were two, and Aziraphale was one of them.The other bore the face of a fallen angel. A demon.Five times Aziraphale spoke vaguely about Heaven. One time Crowley told him the truth.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer!! some plot points may not be compliant to canon but they're mostly the little details (apart from crowley being the wholeass archangel raphael) so dont come at me!

There were threads, when it came to the intricate embroidery of existence, that tied divine beings together. This was the first witnessing of a separation of these ties; God’s revision of a living being, filled with memory and consciousness and the glory of life. The archangel Raphael, healer of the downtrodden, as much a voice for the weak as Metatron was the voice of God, had been stripped before the council of his heavenly brothers. He plummeted down, past the primitive clouds where the headquarters was not yet built, and unfurled his faces. There were two, and Aziraphale was one of them.

The other bore the face of a fallen angel. A demon. He retained all of Raphael’s memories; the good, the bad, and the fall. It was he that had the heart of doubt, the one whose mouth questioned the intentions of God, the one who had the soul of a human. Weak. Or rather, treacherous. At least, in the placement of his faith. Archangels were not meant to be courtiers, they do not doubt or question, pester or influence. They were beacons of pure faith, a symbol of righteousness. This, Raphael- or rather Crawly, as was the nearly-malicious nickname his brothers had given him after the retribution he received, was not. And so he fell, and his grace was stripped from him. As he did, a new creature emerged. One part of a whole. A soul.

This was Aziraphale. He blinked awake to morbid pain, the feeling of a part of him, a part of which he has no knowledge of, was tearing away. This, readers, is the disassembling of the aforementioned threads, being rearranged and restitched in a way that was more convenient. Aziraphale was a new Raphael; better, purer, and most importantly, docile. He will have no recollection of the body that he sees tumbling down the dark abyss, getting sucked into a realm that his new consciousness inherently labelled as  _ ‘Hell’ _ . The creature had flowing robes of white, quickly draining into a pure, malicious black. Dark as space, without the mottles of stars and nebulas. Dark as death. It was so dark, in fact, that Aziraphale had wondered whether it was just the divine burst of light playing tricks on him. He still had the urge to reach out to him as the wind flapped against the folds of their robes. A sudden shiver warned him not to, that it would be treacherous to do so, that the creature was vile. Slowly the sullen red hair, the narrow-slitted pupils that he had at first found beautiful, made his skin crawl. Someone whispered in his ear that this was the face of a fallen; dirty, unfavorable creatures. Enemies. Something else entirely echoed to revere it. That it was a reflection.

_ Remember _ . The dark creature seemed to tell him, punctuated in the way its eerie yellow eyes glowered, looking straight into his.  _ Remember _ . There was a chilling sort of desperation in the way it was said, something that screamed at him to help, to flex his great, new wings and shield him from the devilish pull. This feeling is the remnant of Raphael’s old thoughts, left behind from the harshness of the separation, the same way a few broken threads would remain after you pulled a garment apart. He buried these deep into his purer half as a final, desperate act of preservation. And so Aziraphale stretched out his hands, fingers nearly brushing the creature’s ringlets of scarlet hair, before a hiss of agony filled his eardrums. He cried out at the sound, clutching his head at its intensity, at the ferocity of pure  _ grief _ that it emanated. And once he opened his eyes once more, the creature was nowhere to be found. He could still feel a dissipating link as the last wily threads were being snipped away, the echoing of the anguished words serving as a reminder.  _ Remember _ . Something sounding like whistling-  _ hissing _ , persisted until the wisps of vapor caved its mouth and repaired the hole the creature had placed, turning everything into silence. Down, down. Darkness. Nothing.

_Remember_ _me_.

“ _ Aziraphale _ .” Metatron’s voice boomed. Announced. The words were now one and the same with truth. Aziraphale pried his eyes away from the darkness, facing the imposing light. He knew he wasn’t supposed to have witnessed the falling, but a part of him assured that he wouldn’t remember it anyway. Just as an infant has no recollection of birth. “ _ Angel of the Eastern Gate. The Principality. _ ”

Aziraphale kneeled. Because that is what he was created to do. And he, inherently, knew this.

“My Lord.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's the intro chapter just to explain the headcanon. yes this means that both aziraphale and crowley were raphael, except aziraphale doesn't remember anything about his past life, and crowley will slowly forget what it was like to be raphael. they're two sides of the same archangel, but will develop their own selves and become new people. you'll see what i mean in the future chapters!!
> 
> hit me up on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/klauzoleum)!!


	2. Chapter 2

Crowley missed being able to sense love. 

Not that he would ever admit to it. There was an abundance of all of that, back in Heaven, as one would suspect. It was, wholly, the pure kind. The good, holy, unsinful kind. They were the love of brothers and sisters, the veneration of all celestial beings, both towards God and Her creations. There were no cold spots, no conflicting feelings of guilt or fear or dread. Not the way it’s like on Earth, Crowley would assume. Love read like an easy river in Heaven, pliant and docile and _there_. Love on Earth was more like trying to navigate through an uneasy sea, only being able to glimpse its true form in the thick of it, the eye of the storm. He had always realized that when he was sent down here, like the Raphael inside of him was still yearning to speak. Love never felt the same.

Crowley would like to think that he’s gone now. Mostly, at least.

He missed being able to sense it, mostly because sensing love as an angel was equivalent to eating a hearty meal as a human. It’s satisfying, almost gratifying, to be in its presence. There’s a ripe sort of energy that can be sowed from it, good spirits and so on. Contentment.

It’s quite an opposite sensation sensing dread, evil, or fear as a demon. It’s filling in a different way. Like how a forest is so full of wind that the gale would howl amongst the trees, restless and wild. Like filling a cup so full that liquid would spill over its edges. It’s uncontainable, substantial in a way that was not nourishing. Never satisfying. You always wanted more of it, like some kind of human drug, even though the high did more bad than good. 

Crowley supposed it was just another form of punishment added to the long list of being damned. It’s much worse when he could sense the old him, the Raphael, thrashing and wailing against these senses. A part of him wilted amongst the fear, something that felt cold, gruesome and oppositional. A part of him relished it. Two wolves, feeding, so on. Sometimes Crowley wished he had never held on so tightly when he fell, rebelled even when his wings burned against his spine, one last time, and let himself forget. 

He never knew how Aziraphale felt whenever they travelled, or met quite accidentally, on one of these cold spots. Did it burn, like when Crowley would catch the eyes of holy men? Or when he stepped on consecrated ground? It was one thing to feel the minor unease of other angels when he was still up in Heaven, when the work was slow and God was having one of her moods, and having that as the worst thing he could sense. It was another to be tossed right into it, amongst the gore and the sickness and the dreck of Earth, with the cloying of human minds around them. Really, sometimes it could even disgust Crowley himself.

They’re in the precipice of the fourteenth century now, sometime in the middle of it, when the haunting clouds of the Black Plague ran rampant. Crowley spent most of his time outdoors in this particular era; partly because the deaths acted like mounds of tempting fodder he couldn’t get away from, and partly because he had hoped to catch a glimpse of Aziraphale and see how he’s doing. He knew Raphael, or at least, the better, salvaged part of him, wouldn’t particularly enjoy the current phenomenon. 

As a demon, Crowley didn’t mind strutting along the streets of London in his plague doctor outfit. The mask was a welcome change from the glasses he always wore to cover his eyes. They were getting a bit boring, really. A lot of his friends- or, the better suited word for that was acquaintances- thought the long, beaked mask quite suited his name. _Crow_ ley. They seemed quite amused by that. He supposed there wasn’t anything wrong in finding humor in the littlest things in such a ghastly time.

On the other side of the coin, as a fallen angel, he resented himself for relishing in the deaths of thousands. London started looking a lot like Hell; full of disease and decay, filth and squalor. Besides, didn’t he escape from the down below just because of that? Leapt at the smallest chance to ‘ _go upstairs and cause some problems_ ’ and unreservedly decided to stay? A lot of the demons mocked and teased him for acting so uncomfortable with their mess, so used to being coddled by the cleanliness and the sickening amount of order that Heaven had. They said that, in some ways, some parts of him hadn’t fallen. That a little bit of archangel had decided to stay. That, Crowley conceded, was half true. He didn’t fall like Lucifer did, wholly and filled with hate, derision. He fell with hope and indignance. Or rather, he didn’t even mean to.

Crowley’s one-man practice tended to the wealthy rather than the poor. They were both equally sick, mind you, but there was something about his name that preceded him, and he began to be sought out by the richest men in London. There was nothing he could do, of course, for these dying people. Demons can’t perform miracles. But he would still come and sit with the family of the sick, breathing in bits of lavender and chrysanthemum from the filter in his mask in his attempt to disguise the stench, and listed the symptoms that they would have already known. Raphael, who he has started to refer to as a third person, guardian of the travellers, faded away bit by bit when exposed to these conditions. This is what drove him to do more.

What he could do, though, was gift the family with a particular death date. _Somewhere between two weeks_ , he would say. Or, in the worst of times, _tonight,_ or _this afternoon_ . These things couldn’t be changed, shortened or prolonged, no matter how much he tried. So the family would take note of this, and the so-called _‘estimation’_ would always be true. This is what convinced them of Crowley being one of the only good and true practitioners in the midst of all the other phony plague doctors. At least they would be able to relish the moments they had left, Crowley thought as he left the last grand house with pockets full of cash. No matter how long and sufferable they would feel.

The air felt stagnant, intrusive even, when he decided to take towards the cobbled streets for company as he retired for the day. He didn’t know if it was because of the lack of wind, as were the elements in June, or the warmed-over, permeating stench of death as he passed by a slum tenement. There were clusters of the homeless slouched outside their doors, like an appendage to the housing that spilled outwards. There were always too many people living in one of those small hovels, Crowley thought. The children have opted to play outside, amongst the other sick and tired. That is, if they weren’t horrible with it themselves.

Crowley spotted a familiar head of blond hair tucked amongst the beggars, back slightly bent over as he spoke intently to the haggard looking man slumped on the ground. It was Aziraphale, without a shadow of a doubt. He could tell just by the bright white kirtle he sported, covered modestly by an equally pristine cloak. The demon froze.

He’d gone past the initial shock. Long, long ago. The bone-chilling moment of seeing him for the first time, _recognizing_ him, and not being able to say anything. And partly he was grateful for it, the quick and unexpected ripping of the band aid. To witness the great white wings he had seen once before, amidst the delicate emerald shrubbery and the outer concrete walls. Down to the very second Aziraphale saw him, smiled rather carefully, and proceeded to ask for his name, Crowley didn’t know what to expect. Would he remember? Had the warnings, the echoes, been enough? He should have known not to expect anything, of course. But the feeling was only there for as long as it took to form.

Crowley didn’t know what he would’ve done if they had met somewhere outside of Eden, don’t know if he would even _speak_ to him if he spotted a familiar blond head in the streets. And then they wouldn’t even have known each other.

Well, Crowley would always know, of course. But there’s a different bitterness in that.

There was something frightening to it, to feel the pull between the two of them, something unspoken but palpable, when they met in Eden. Like a string pulling taut, strong and terrifying. Both of them were afraid to let go, to retreat from this feeling, in case the line would snap and strike the other. The Raphael in each of them reaching out, just like the time when Crowley fell. _I was you_ , or, rather more accurately, _you’re a part of me. We are a part of each other._ And what do you say to that? _Well that went down like a lead balloon._

He must have been staring too long, because at the very next second Aziraphale turned around. A flutter of recognition descended upon his features as he gave a bright smile.

“Crowley!”

“Aziraphale.” Crowley reciprocated, waiting as the angel walked over after he bid the man goodbye. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Likewise.” Aziraphale replied, sparing Crowley a greeting glance. It didn’t take his blue eyes long to wander to the scene around them again, especially to the adjacent alleyway where the homeless packed to avoid the sun. The people’s coughing and hacking raised like petulant waves, short but incessant. He grimaced. “Not very good times, it seems.”

“Not really, no.” Crowley didn’t really know what to say. “This plague is sort of… hellish.”

“Indeed.” Aziraphale agreed rather easily, but shot Crowley a disbelieving look after a dawning moment, looking sickened and disappointed. He narrowed his eyes accusingly. “Please don’t tell me…”

“What? No! _Never_.” Crowley defended, hands pointing at himself, “I’m all dressed in a doctor’s suit, for Hell’s sake.”

Aziraphale shrugged apologetically. “Well, not like any of them lot are doing anything, the doctors. Just out there swindling the poor.” He turned to Crowley, “But I’ve heard you’ve been quite the fortune teller lately.”

“Anything to help get this age over with as peacefully as possible.” The demon muttered as an excuse, before saying, “Besides, doesn’t this seem more like something your lot would do? A plague? Something dastardly to end all things?”

“Oh, no.” Aziraphale furrowed his eyebrows, evidently distressed by the thought. He fiddled troublingly with his fingers, which were folded neatly atop his hips. They looked on as a child toddled into his sick mother’s arms. “No. They wouldn’t have. This won’t end them. Not yet.”

“‘Guess it’s all just a part of the Great Plan.” Crowley drawled mockingly. Aziraphale made a clueless, solemn nod. The demon rolled his eyes. A scruffy looking child let out her first, questionable cough. They all knew what that meant. “Still seems a bit cruel, if you asked me.”

A parallel to their encounter at the time of Noah’s Ark. The famed tale.

Aziraphale shook his head at the sight. If he was truly Raphael, or at least bits of him, Crowley could only imagine how much he was aching, seeing these people. The broken, beaten, the lost wanderers. The very people he was destined to save. 

Crowley tried not to think about it.

“I wonder what they’ve done to cross Her.” The angel commented absently, a genuine thought. 

Crowley hummed noncommittally. Because he didn’t know what he could say without sounding snarky. “And what have you been doing then?”

“Little miracles, here and there, whenever I can.” Aziraphale pursed his lips in thought. This, at least, brightened him up the smallest bit. Crowley could see it in the way his blue eyes shone. “A bit more bread on the shelves, spare change in their coats. Breeze a little stronger in the summer, alleys a little warmer last winter.” Then the light was gone, and he looked dampened as he sighed heavily. “There really isn’t much to do.”

“It’s all a bit… depressing.” Crowley agreed.

Aziraphale angled his head upwards, toward the gathering clouds. They grumble with a strange sort of omnipotence, as if God had heard them. It was going to rain, Crowley thought as he watched the beggars huddle closer, collecting their belongings tight against their bodies as they prepared for the wetness. Sickness festered in the damp. 

The angel frowned, half in thought and half about the circumstance, before he faced Crowley. “I wonder what they’re doing up in Heaven to let this stretch so long.”

Crowley hummed in false thought. He knew exactly what they were doing: absolutely nothing.

“Fancy a spot of tea then?” Aziraphale asked tiredly after a moment, “I know a place on the nicer side of town that hasn’t closed up.”

There’s a strange squeeze in his chest right then, tight and sudden. Crowley knew what his answer was before he could even register the thought. The temptation. It was better that way. He shook his head in forced apology. “No can do, angel. I’m afraid the doctor is all booked tonight.”

The angel’s face fell slightly, a withered look that lasted half a second, before he continued. “Oh.” And then, after a doubtful beat, “And when will I see you again?”

Crowley shrugged. “Not quite sure. Perhaps it’s all up to the Great Plan.”

Aziraphale gave a soft, lopsided smile. It matched well, oddly, with their surroundings. “Perhaps.”

Crowley walked away after another customary round of their bitter goodbyes, and forced himself not to look back. The echoes of coughs and groans followed him up the street, the shuffling of feet and rags as the poor hauled themselves below the eaves of shops and tenements, desperate to escape the wrath of the weather. Crowley tried to pay this no mind. After all, he had another thought in his head. He didn’t have any plans at all that evening, but he still wasn’t obligated to keep the angel company, right? It seemed like a good deed to have gone with him, something very un-demonlike. Like giving in to a side of him that has gone, now unseeable. Like consorting with the enemy. He would like to think of it as an act of preservation; trying to keep himself from spilling the truth, from looking at the angel and seeing a part of him that he missed. A part of him that seemed so familiar but so foreign. The right shade of paint. The wrong drawing.

Crowley picked up his pace as the rain trickled down, tugging his mask back on his face. He saw his reflection as he passed by the destitute windows of closed-down shops, past puddles of water on the ground. Black. Dark. Unrecognizable.

After all, he was Raphael no longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> college is kicking my ass so updates will be slow!! kudos and comments are always appreciated!!
> 
> hit me up on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/klauzoleum)!!


	3. Chapter 3

It seems significant to say that, at the time, they were both very drunk. Wine drunk, to be exact, which Crowley would insist to be the best type of drunk. He was humming mildly to himself, glasses slipping down the high bridge of his nose as he lay sprawled across the angel’s ratty armchair, pint threatening to spill from his languid grasp. The posture accommodated for his great, onyx wings to flex over the hearth of Aziraphale’s home, tempting the fire to burn the tips of his jet black feathers. He supposed it wouldn’t make a great deal of difference if it did.

Aziraphale never liked them. The glasses, that is. They always made the angel unsure of what the demon was thinking of, unable to read the movement of his pupils, or figure out what exactly he was looking at. It had been a fairly new addition to Crowley’s wardrobe, one that he had sparsely worn outdoors. Not his wings. Aziraphale had always loved Crowley’s pair of them; loved how they had a slightly larger span than his, how they were much slimmer and lithe, so as to fit his figure.

It was a great deal to be blessed with broad wings. 

A lot of the angels tended to associate one’s span with how much you were favored by God, even if there had never been any proof of truth in that. Truthfully, you could change them in any way you wanted if you thought about it hard enough. Imagination, and whatnot. But all the heavenly creatures were gifted with an initial design, and they believed what you were gifted, at the beginning, was what is true. Inherently. The archangels, in particular, boasted wings so wide some say they could shoulder the very stars they hung. Principalities had pairs full and strong, and their feathers seemed to shine the brightest. Even if, in this particular century, the work of principalities aren’t viewed as nearly as noble or glorious, Aziraphale still adored the old sentiment. There’s little to be proud of with having to live amongst the very beings they were supposed to be ruling over, especially now when the humans were getting more and more sacrilegious. Besides, he couldn’t say for certain if that any of that was true. Wings were old fashioned, superfluous and excessive. Most of the time, inconvenient. It wasn’t like they had to cross the galaxies for much anymore, especially not after they had invented telephones and fax machines and built a headquarters.

And maybe that was why Crowley had kept them, those vast, great things. To show that even he was once favored by God. Even if they were, now, as black as night. But Aziraphale had never been too sure.

“Crowley.” 

“Yes, angel?” he slurred, voice thick with sleep. It had been a while since he had one of his slumbers, Aziraphale thought. Alcohol tended to make him even sleepier.

“Why do you keep them?”

“These?” said Crowley, who had just righted the frame of his glasses and had his fingers poised on its bridge. He looked at the angel as if he just asked why the sky was blue. Or at least, Aziraphale assumed. After all, he could never know what those eyes were saying. “Seemed to go without saying…”

“No, no. Not those.” the angel huffed, before hesitating if he should actually ask. Was it a bit like prodding at an old wound? Insensitive? “I meant your wings.”

Crowley stilled at this, the mug of wine pausing its movement where it had barely touched his lips. He continued anyway after a handful of seconds, gulping some of its contents down before setting the pint upon his stomach. It tipped, just a bit, when he breathed. 

“Can I be honest?”

Aziraphale cocked his head, “Surely.” 

The demon drummed his fingers against the rim of his glass, head settling on the armrest as he looked towards the ceiling in pensive thought. His glasses, those awful round things, hitched up where it stood against the cushioning. Aziraphale could catch the slightest glimpse of his golden irises, glowing in the most discreet way.

“I’ve always…” Crowley licked his upper lip, then adjusted his head to face the angel, who sat with a leg swung on top of the other, gazing at him with patience, “I guess I’ve never…”

“Never what?”

“Took them off.” the demon said. Then, after a moment, released an exasperated kind of chuckle. “Not properly, anyway. I’ve hidden them, sure, all the time. Made them immaterial, permeable. But they’re always there.”

“Why?” Aziraphale asked, as gentle as his voice would allow him, “You’ve always liked to- I don’t know, keep with the times? Why not drop them?”

Crowley laughed at that, before the hard lines around his mouth grew more serious, voice sounding more like gravel. The temperature in the room dropped several degrees, involuntarily. Aziraphale really wished the demon would stop doing that.

“It feels odd standing without them.” he said, taking off his glasses with one hand, then rubbing his temples with the back of it. His golden eyes looked glassy. Tired. “Tried it once. Felt like I’ll fall over. They balance me.”

Aziraphale smiled, “Like a dog with its tail?” 

Crowley shrugged, “Sure.”

“I guess I’ve never had them long enough to know.” Aziraphale said, “I mean, I’ve always had them, surely. I didn’t have much time to explore the galaxies though, flapping about, or whatever. We had always been taught to learn to adapt, to do just fine without them. And anyway, I only had a few decades of free time. Then it was straight to Eden for me.”

“More than that, I bet.” Crowley muttered.  _ More. Much more, with me _ . 

Aziraphale hummed, “Can’t seem to recall. It had all been boring work, really. Look after the newer crop, prepare them for war. Always a lot of military work for me. ‘ _ Fulfilling the divine ministry’ _ . Didn’t really know what we were preparing for, truth be told.”

_ They were distracting you. _ Crowley wanted to say,  _ keeping you away from the thoughts that intruded the old Raphael _ . He doubted Aziraphale’s principality meant anything more than signifying how the archangel Raphael earned a holier title after the separation, to make God seem like She was achieving a cleansing in doing so, and not damning Raphael’s true soul. Everyone still treated Aziraphale so poorly, mocked and pried and prodded, just as if he was one of the regular angels. Certainly not like he was a principality at all. Gabriel wasn’t an exception, and Crowley was sure that Michael had an ear trained towards Aziraphale. 

Crowley’s mind stuttered at the thought of his brothers and sisters. He’s developed a sort of Pavlovian response to them, really; floods of images of them standing against the soft blanket of space rushed through his head, upright as though they were stitched right onto the black canvas, just as the stars were. There were smatters of them, everywhere, like freckles on sunkissed skin. Crowley couldn’t remember how long it took to assemble them all. Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly lazy, he would gather small bursts of stars on his palm and blow the gentlest breath to spread the berth, fluttering the great joints of his wings. They would smear across the sky, dancing.  _ Angel dust _ , he had thought,  _ pure and glorious and true. _ He drew pictures of feats and worldly creatures with them, telling the tales of God’s creations in its purest form.  _ The flayed wings of Aquila, the distinguishing, heavy claws of Scorpius, the resentment and boastfulness in Cassiopeia. _ Hieroglyphs in the skies, waiting to be read. The humans would love them. He knew it. 

Michael liked to do the more tedious work, always the overachiever that she was; swirling the starlit nebulas, laying swathes of paint over the galaxies, adding weight to ferocious black holes. Sometimes Crowley helped her with some of it, particularly the nebulas. He always loved its colors. 

Gabriel preferred naming them all, aiding God as She etched their identities into the hearts of future men, already creating the fate of humanity. Sometimes Crowley thought that Gabriel was privy to them, those unspoken stories. Even though it wasn’t true. That would destroy the ineffability of the Great Plan, after all. Still, he had always been the closest to Her. Before She disappeared, back to where She was untouchable and supreme, calculating creations and molding adjuncts to timelines. They never saw Her again. Nobody did.

His back ached at the thought, where the sinews and joints of his wings met his spine. It did that sometimes, when he tended to reminisce too much about Heaven, about soaring through the skies and letting his wings stretch to its potential. It was like he was being damned for even thinking fondly of those memories. Like an old bruise that never truly healed.  _ Too late _ , they seemed to remind him, mocking and nagging,  _ a lot too late. _ He ruffled them a bit, as if that ever did anything. 

Crowley never meant to fall. He loved his brothers, loved his job, loved his  _ people _ .

_ Distracting you. Just as they had distracted me.  _

Crowley emptied his pint at that, lazily bringing it down from his lips only for it to tumble out of his grasp and onto the floor. He dug the heels of his palm into his eyes, shoulders tight and frustrated. The ache wouldn’t seem to go away. 

Aziraphale looked at him sympathetically, frowning. Probably thinking it’s the alcohol. “I think it’s time to sober up now, my dear.”

Crowley shuffled on the armchair, turning away. “I don’t think I quite want to yet, angel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god im SUPER slow with updates but trust me im trying my hardest!!! dont forget to kudos and comment!
> 
> hit me up on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/klauzoleum)!!


End file.
